Kuro

A Japanese woman in Paris, who nurses her paraplegic white boyfriend by day and works in a karaoke bar by night, is the unreliable narrator of this unnerving drama. Directors Tujiko Noriko and Joji Koyama tell their story largely through the woman's voice-over, whose frequent incongruity with the action onscreen creates an atmosphere of dreamlike uncertainty and suggests a kaleidoscopic state of mind: the woman (played by Noriko) speaks in first and third person, Japanese and French, as she tells stories from her past, particularly her happier years with the man when he was able-bodied. Conversely, his interior life is left blank; he appears to be mute, and his physical and seemingly mental paralysis are never explained. The result is a creepy experiment in nonlinear storytelling that successfully blurs reality, memory, and fantasy. In Japanese and French with subtitles.
ByLeah Pickett